Putnam Competition

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, ``the world's toughest math test'' (TIME magazine December 23, 2003, p.51) is an annual competition at Universities in North America.It is open to any Undergraduate Student (students may compete at most 4 years).

Good individual performance on the examination greatly enhances a student's chance of being admitted to their graduate school of choice or getting a competitive edge in the job market.

Our Colorado State team has had extraordinary success, placing as high as 30th in 1997, 15th in 1998,37th in 2001 and 12th in 2002. (Considering that basically all ``big-name'' schools field a team, this is an amazing achievement.)

Students from all majors are encouraged to compete in the Putnam examination at Colorado State. Participation does not require knowledge of higher level math courses (the only course whose topics regularly come up is calculus), but should enjoy problem solving.

This years competition will take place December 4. A special training session for this will be held this fall semester once per week. In this session we will look at old problems and look at strategies for problem solving, both with a view to the Putnam competition as well as for math problems in general.

Students who participate in this session and sit the exam are eligible to register for one math seminar credit. I will give details about this at the first session.

We will meet Thursdays, at 2pm in E106.

If you cannot make these meetings, you can still participate in the competition. Please let me know by early October about your intentions.

If you are interested in participating in these training sessions and/or in the Putnam Competition or for questions please contact:

Alexander Hulpke
Weber 217
hulpke@math.colostate.edu
http://www.math.colostate.edu/~hulpke/putnam
491-4288

(The training session is not a prerequisite for participating in the Putnam competition, but in any case you must register with me by early October to be eligible for participation.)

Example Problem

Three distinct points with integer coordinates lie in the plane on a circle with radius $r>0$. Show that two of these points are separated by a distance of at least $r^{\frac{1}{3}}$.